Something Worth Fighting For
by bewize
Summary: [COMPLETE] 20 Facts About Gohan During the Cell Games


A/N: This was written for a 20 Facts Community on LJ.

As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated. :)

Something Worth Fighting For

_20 Facts About Gohan During the Cell Games_

**1. **Gohan forgot to brush his teeth the day that he went with his father to fight Cell. He'd been anxious and he hadn't even thought about it until they were halfway to the battle field. It was ten minutes after the fighting started before he quit worrying what his mother would say if she'd known.

**2. **After arriving at the Games, Gohan had gotten stage fright. He wasn't afraid that Cell would kill him, he was afraid that he'd trip and fall on his face and that all of the people who were depending on him would sigh in disgust and throw their hands up to wait for the end of the world. He was sure that if Cell didn't kill him, the embarrassment of landing on his face on international television would.

**3.** Gohan was no stranger to violence. At the age of 11 he had seen more violence than most people would in an entire lifetime , but watching Cell fight with his father had made him feel sick to his stomach. A particularly vicious punch that Goku took in his gut before falling to the ground brought tears to Gohan's eyes. He blinked away the tears quickly. He didn't want anyone to think that he was too young to be there.

**4. **Gohan celebrated his eleventh birthday a week before the Cell Games began. His mother had made him a birthday cake and he'd blown out the candles. It took months before Gohan was able to admit to himself that he hadn't wasted his birthday wish by hoping for a new computer. Still, even years later, he wished that he hadn't made such a selfish wish for his birthday.

**5.** When Goku told Cell that he quit, Gohan had felt a second's disbelief, followed by a moment's disgust.

**6. **When Goku had told Cell that he should fight the strongest of them, and named his own son, Gohan had thought about running away. When he finally stepped forward to accept the challenge, he was apologizing to his father in his head for having thought him a coward.

**7. **After the fight started, when it became obvious that Gohan in Super-Saiyan form was no match for the green android, he kept expecting Goku to intervene and stop the beating. He could hear Piccolo and even Trunks begging Goku to step in. When his father hadn't, he'd hated him for just a minute.

**8. **Piccolo asked one time, and only one time, about the thoughts that went through Gohan's head during his fight with Cell. He had wanted to know what had happened when Cell had crushed Android 16's head that had finally pushed Gohan into his ascension. Gohan hadn't answered for so long that Piccolo thought he wouldn't, then Gohan had shrugged and said, "He told me it was okay to fight for the people I loved. And Cell said it was good advice right before he killed him. That pissed me off."

**9. **From his position on his knees, Gohan vaguely wondered who was screaming. It took him several minutes to realize that he was the only one who had lost his father, so the gut wrenching screams of "Daddy!" had to be his. He'd been screaming so much during the battle that his voice began to crack and fade long before his mind stopped reeling. Then the grief and guilt hit him and he fell into silence that echoed in his ears even more than his voice had moments before. In the few minutes of relative peace that followed, Gohan wondered incoherently when he'd stopped calling Goku 'daddy' and started calling him 'dad' and why he had switched back at that moment.

**10.** Gohan had felt Cell's Ki for several seconds before Trunks had fallen victim to the android. He would never admit, even to himself, that he had kept silent and let another of his comrades fall because doing otherwise would have meant that Goku's sacrifice had been in vain.

**11. **Watching Vegeta fight to avenge his fallen son had made Gohan feel for the first time that he could understand the Saiyan Prince. Later, when Vegeta whispered his broken apology, Gohan had been sure he'd been delirious from the pain of his arm. He never could fully make himself believe that he'd heard Vegeta apologize for anything.

**12.** As strange as it was, when Cell's blast broke his arm, all Gohan could think was that his mother used to kiss his scrapes and scratches better when he was younger. Her kiss had magically made all aches and pains better. Staring at his arm in horror, Gohan forced his mother out of his head. It was a bad break - the bone protruded from the skin and blood ran freely down his arm. With a grimace of pain, Gohan forced his arm straight, trying to keep it from being more of a liability than it already was. It would take more than a kiss to make that feel better.

**13. **When Gohan had first heard Goku's voice in his head, his first thought was that he had been killed. He had always wondered if Goku could read that thought from the After Life and if he'd been able to feel the keen disappointment that surged through Gohan when he realized that it wasn't true.

**14. **"NOW!" Goku's voice had screamed in his mind and for the first time since the battle had begun, Gohan went completely quiet inside. There was no room for worry about anyone – not his mother, not his friends, not himself, not even the world at large. There was no space to feel anything – no grief, no pain, no regret, and no loss. In that moment, he became something both more and less than himself. He was a conduit. With power roaring through him, the world shaking under him, the sky cracking over him, Gohan felt nothing at all. That was the real reason that he'd never wanted to access that kind of power in a fight again. It was too real a possibility that he'd lose himself in it.

**15. **Gohan couldn't stop laughing when it was all over. He laughed because he was alive. He laughed because he'd won. He laughed because if he didn't, he wasn't sure he'd ever stop crying.

**16. **Telling his mother that his father wasn't coming home was scarier than anything that happened during the actual fighting.

**17. **When Gohan first heard about the mysterious "Gold Fighter," he'd laughed until he was almost sick. After that, it just made him sick.

**18. **The fact that Gohan had nightmares about the Cell Games for years after it was over wasn't a secret. The fact that he enjoyed the parts of the dreams where he'd made Cell scream in anguish was.

**19.** Krillan once asked Gohan if Hercule Satan's claim of victory upset him. It didn't. In truth, Gohan found that part of the battle hysterically funny. Also, as he had no intention of ever revealing his existence to the world as a whole, he didn't care if Hercule took the title of World Savior.

**20. **Several years after Cell had been defeated, Gohan realized that Goten must have been conceived while he and Goku had been at home relaxing. Although he was duly disgusted at the thought of his parents having sex, he was mostly glad that his family had been able to spend those days together. At the time, he had thought that Goku was making a bad decision to not keep training. In retrospect, he realized that it had given him and his father both something to fight for.


End file.
